The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) (12 page)

“Looks like we were wrong about someone targeting couples only,” Suze said, sitting down on the bed opposite Quinn. “It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”

Quinn didn’t answer her. What could she say to someone who had done what Suze had done? How innocent she looked, with that golden hair and those big blue eyes. But those big blue eyes had glared with hatred at Tobie while she was testifying.

No wonder Suze flirted incessantly with every boy on campus. She had no intention of getting involved with anyone because she was still in love with Gunther. Or she wouldn’t have kept the ring.

Ivy had retreated from the bathroom doorway. She was standing at the sink, looking as uncertain as Quinn felt. It seemed odd to see Ivy looking unsure.

There was only one thing to do. The ring had to be taken to the police. If it didn’t prove anything else, at least it proved that Gunther Brach’s girlfriend, who had sworn vengeance against a Salem student, was actually on campus. The police would have to figure out what to do about that chilling piece of news.

Quinn had so many questions whizzing around in her brain. She wanted to scream each and every one of them at Suze. But she didn’t dare. She’d be leaving Suze and Ivy together, and it was crucial that Suze not suspect they’d found the ring. That could be dangerous for Ivy.

Swallowing her anxiety, she forced herself to remain seated and talk with Suze about Simon while Ivy worked quietly in the bathroom, glancing out every now and again at Quinn and lifting her eyebrows inquisitively, as if to say, “Well, what are you going to
do
?”

Finally, Quinn couldn’t stand it another minute. Sitting there, talking with Suze as if absolutely nothing had changed, listening to her phony concern about Simon, was making her sick. She was about to stand up, make an excuse, and leave, when Suze leaned forward on the bed and whispered something to her.

Quinn didn’t catch the words. “What?” she asked, standing up.

Suze stood up, too. She moved closer to Quinn. “I said,” she whispered, “what are you doing with Ivy’s ring?”

Q
UINN STARED DOWN AT
the ring in her hand.

“If Ivy catches you with that,” Suze said, still whispering, “she’ll have your head. I picked it up once when she was in the shower, and when she saw me with it, she screamed bloody murder. You’d better put it down, fast!”

The ring was Ivy’s? Not Suze’s? It belonged to Ivy?

How could Ivy be Gunther’s girlfriend?

Quinn’s eyes went from the ring in her hand to the bathroom. Ivy was at the sink, her back to them, hastily removing the pink foam rollers from her hair.

Moving quickly, fingers flying, as if she were in a hurry.

She had just finished setting her hair. It couldn’t be curled already. Why was she taking the rollers out now?

She was moving as if she had something she simply had to do, right away.

Had she seen the ring in Quinn’s hand?

Then, as Ivy freed her hair clump by clump, Quinn could see by the light over the bathroom mirror that the roots, which Ivy would hide when she brushed her hair flat, were not as dark as the rest of her hair. In fact, they weren’t dark at all. They were blonde.

Gunther Brach’s girlfriend had been a blonde. And Ivy’s dye job clearly needed a touch-up. Was that what she’d been about to do when Quinn arrived? And then had quickly pretended she was only setting it?

She never curls her hair, Quinn reminded herself. She wears it sleek and smooth. It always reminded me of a seal’s coat.

Quinn felt dizzy. Her brain was spinning. It wasn’t Suze? Ivy, not Suze? She felt completely disoriented, as if she’d suddenly found herself stepping out of a spacecraft onto an entirely different planet.

Ivy.

Quinn’s brain ordered, You have to do something and you have to do it
now.

She knew her brain was right.

The ring still in her hand, she stepped into the bathroom and whispered to Ivy, “Don’t let Suze know we suspect her. Could be dangerous. Tell her you have to monitor the halls or something, but don’t stay here alone with her, okay?” And then added in a normal voice, “Your hair’s going to look great. See you.”

Then she left the bathroom and walked to the door, signaling to Suze to follow along. At the door, out of Ivy’s line of vision, Quinn whispered, “Don’t tell her I have the ring, and don’t stay here with her! Go find Leon, or maybe Tobie’s home by now, but don’t stay
here.
Promise me.”

Thoroughly bewildered, Suze nodded.

Aloud, Quinn said, “See you guys later, okay? I want to call the infirmary and find out how Simon is. Then I have some heavy-duty sleeping to do. What a day! ’Bye!”

The ring still clutched in her hand, Quinn hurried from the room.

She took the elevator to save time, shuddering as she stepped into the place where only a short time earlier, she had found Simon lying in his own blood, unconscious.

But she breathed a sigh of satisfaction as, just before the elevator closed, she saw Suze leaving the room and entering their RA’s room. She’d be safe with Meg.

When Quinn reached the lobby, she ran to the pay telephone and called the police station, asking for the officer she’d talked to earlier.

“I need to know that girl’s name,” she insisted, wasting no time. “Gunther Brach’s girlfriend. We talked about her at the infirmary, remember? Did you find out what her name is?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said casually. “It’s here someplace. Hold on a sec.”

Hurry, hurry, Quinn telegraphed, hurry! Why had Ivy been taking the rollers out of her hair so quickly? Had she overheard them whispering? Any second now, she’d discover that the ring was missing.

“Here it is,” the officer’s voice said. “I told you it was a weird name. And it does start with an S, just like I said.”

Scarcely breathing, Quinn said, “What
is
it?”

“Salina. Salina Grun. German name, I’d say, just like her boyfriend’s. Salina Ivy Grun.”

Grun. Green. Salina
Ivy
Green.

Thrusting the ring into her jeans pocket, Quinn said, “Don’t go away. I’ll be right there. I have something to show you.” She hung up.

Then she ran from the building and jumped into her car.

Q
UINN’S HANDS WERE TREMBLING
as she thrust the key into the ignition. In her haste, she tromped down too hard on the accelerator and the engine roared angrily.

Calm down, calm down, she warned, taking her foot off the pedal. Ivy doesn’t know you
know.
Maybe she won’t even notice the ring is missing. Relax, relax, don’t panic!

Her mind raced as she pulled out of the parking lot and drove off campus, turning the car toward town.

Ivy … Ivy was Salina Grun! Gunther Brach’s girlfriend. The girl who, according to the police and Tobie, had probably been with him when he killed Peter Gallagher. The girl who had sat in the courtroom every day, watching as Tobie testified against Gunther. The girl who had threatened Tobie with death if she testified. And Tobie
had
testified.

Quinn forced herself to stick to the speed limit. The highway to town was uncrowded this late at night. No moon. She was driving through a black velvet painting broken only by her headlights.

She could feel the ring in her jeans pocket.
Love, Gunther, forever.

It was so hard to believe that Ivy Green … Grun… Salina Grun… had been in love with a criminal. With someone who would do what Gunther had done. Smart, funny Ivy, who, like Suze, wasn’t about to get involved romantically with anyone. Because she already
was
involved. Unfortunately, the object of Ivy Green’s affections was in prison.

And that had made Ivy very, very angry.

She had attacked those couples. And then she had tried to frame Tobie for it. That was why she’d come to. Salem in the first place. To get even with Tobie for sending Gunther to prison. By sending Tobie to prison. Ivy’s idea of justice.

She had dyed her hair, lost weight, and was probably wearing contact lenses. And she had arrived on Salem’s campus with a plan.

Such a clever plan. I thought it was Suze, Quinn chastised herself. But it wasn’t. Same plan, different planner. And Ivy made no mistake when she picked out my clothes to use as planted evidence. She did it on purpose. To make it look like Tobie was trying to frame me. Clever. Very clever.

But it hadn’t worked.

Why not?

And then Quinn
got
it. She got it as surely as if Ivy had been sitting beside her, telling her the whole plan, detail by detail. And as frightened as she was, as loudly as her heart was pounding in her chest as she drove through the night, she threw back her head and laughed. She couldn’t help it. If you looked at it in a certain way, it was really very funny.

Here Ivy had come to Salem with this wonderful, perfect plan, and it had all been screwed up by a …

sleepwalker!

If I hadn’t had those episodes, she thought, I would have taken all of those things I found in my room to the police right away. A guilty person wouldn’t have taken the evidence to the police. So the police would have thought I was innocent. And the police know Tobie’s history. They know about her stay in the hospital. They know that she has good reason to be unhappy when she sees other couples in love. So it would have looked exactly the way Ivy wanted it to look … as if
Tobie
were trying to frame
me.
The police would have suspected Tobie right away.

That all by itself probably would have been Tobie’s undoing. Driven her over the edge. She was precariously close to it already. Even if she hadn’t gone to prison, she would probably have ended up in a psych ward somewhere, just from thinking about the horrible possibility of having to be in a courtroom again, this time as the defendant.

What a great plan!

And I ruined the whole thing, Quinn thought, still grinning. Ivy didn’t know about the sleepwalking. If she had, she might have guessed that I’d probably think I really was the guilty party and that would have ruined everything. Actually… it
did
ruin everything.

Thank God no one had ever told Ivy that Tobie’s roommate had a sleeping disorder.

Quinn shook her head. It must have driven Ivy crazy when I kept hiding the stuff she’d hidden. I was so afraid that
I’d
put them there. But she didn’t know that. I wonder what she thinks happened to them?

So. Ivy wasn’t who anyone thought she was. In more ways than one. The police must have been right all along. Ivy
had
been in that car with Gunther. She had
known
what he was going to do. Maybe she hadn’t known Peter was about to be killed, but she’d known he was about to be robbed. If Gunther hadn’t lied for her, she’d be in prison, too.

Well, now she would be. The ring was proof of who she really was. And after what she’d done on campus …

No wonder Tobie hadn’t recognized her. Ivy didn’t look anything like the policeman’s description of Salina Grun. “Heavyset, blue-eyed blonde? Hardly. Ivy Green was slim as a reed, and had black hair and dark brown eyes.

But Ivy’s own mother probably wouldn’t recognize her now. Why should Tobie?

Quinn steered the car around a curve.

Then a small seed of doubt was planted in Quinn’s mind. She had almost forgotten that Ivy and Tim had been attacked, too. Where did that fit in?

Well,
Tim
was still in the hospital.

But … Ivy
wasn’t,
was she?

No, she wasn’t.

An image of Ivy lying on her bed last night, blood staining the pillow, flashed into Quinn’s dizzied brain. Meg had left the room. Tobie had gone to the bathroom. I turned my back to make a phone call. Ivy had a shoulderbag on; I remember because it banged against the doorjamb when Meg brought her into the room. It would only have taken Ivy a second to whip that hammer out of her purse and toss it under Tobie’s bed. And she was wearing gloves … I know because I’m the one who took them off her. She said it was because it had turned so cold outside. But gloves leave no fingerprints.

Ivy had bashed Tim on the head with a hammer?

Quinn shuddered. How could someone do that? Just thinking about it made her stomach rise up in protest. How much hate did you have to have in you to do something like that?

Quinn underestimated the sharpness of a curve and nearly swerved off the road onto the berm. Willing herself to pay attention, she tried to ignore the questions swirling around in her brain.

Bright headlights from behind, reflected in Quinn’s rearview mirror, nearly blinded her.

“Turn off your brights!” she shouted into the mirror. “I can’t see!”

The lights remained bright, and were approaching her car at high speed.

“Oh, I don’t
need
this now!” Quinn moaned aloud. It was hard enough trying to stay calm. All she wanted to do was get to the police station and hand them the ring. Let them handle it. Let them save Tobie.

And where
was
Tobie, anyway? No one had seen her all day. Ivy hadn’t … no, she couldn’t have …

The inside of Quinn’s car was bathed in a bright yellow glow as the car behind her raced closer.

“Why don’t you just pass me?” she shrieked. “You’re blinding me!” She slowed down. “Pass me, dammit!”

Thunk!

With the first jarring blow to her rear fender, Quinn’s head snapped backward. Her eyes opened wide and her jaw fell open. Her grip on the steering wheel eased, and the car wavered slightly.

She’d been
hit
!

What on earth was that idiot doing? There was plenty of room for him to pass. There were no other cars approaching. But he’d
hit
her!

Thunk! Harder, this time.

No accident. The blows to her car were
not
accidental.

Quinn’s heart stopped. Her eyes flew to the rearview mirror. Nothing there but blinding light and the vague, shadowy outline of a vehicle. Couldn’t see what kind, what color, or who was behind the wheel.

A maniac. No question …