Free They're Watching (2010) by Gregg Hurwitz Page A

A small, quiet kid who sat in the back row, kept his head down, and sketched. Figuring him for shy, I'd called on him once to draw him out, and he'd taken an aggressively long time before finally offering a one-word response.
    "Yeah, that one. You seen that kid's drawings? All fucked-up beheadings and dragons and shit. We joke he gonna go V Tech up in here, you feel me?"
    "V Tech?"
    "Virginia Tech." Diondre made a pistol of his hand and shot it around the empty chairs.
    "In my day," I said with a grimace, "we called it 'postal.' "
    "Goddamn it," Julianne said. "Someone broke the swing-out thing."
    "INCONSIDERATENESS ABOUNDS. AND THE FATE OF MR. COFFEE HANGS IN THE BALANCE."
    "Knock that shit off, Marcello. I'm getting a no-caffeine headache."
    He looked to me for support. "One day they can't get enough, the next you're old news."
    "Town without pity," I drawled.
    We had the faculty lounge to ourselves, as usual. Marcello was kicking back on the fuzzy plaid couch, thumbing through The Hollywood Reporter, and I was rereading the few assignments Paeng Bugayong had handed in, mini-scripts for shorts he could shoot later in a production class. So far he had a castrating wizard who targeted jocks, a serial vandal who kidnapped Baby Jesuses from Christmas nativity scenes, and a girl who had resorted to cutting because she was so misunderstood by her parents. Standard disaffected adolescent fare, half goth, half emo, and all seemingly harmless enough.
    When I'd asked the department assistant to pull Bugayong's student file for me earlier, bumbling out some pretext about wanting to make sure he wasn't recycling skipped-attendance excuses, she'd held eye contact a beat too long. My nervous grin had frozen on my face even after she said she would put in a request to Central Records.
    "Either of you teach a kid named Bugayong?" I asked.
    "Odd name," Marcello said. "On second thought, that's probably like John Doe for Korean people."
    "Filipino," I said.
    Julianne banged the coffeemaker with the heel of her hand. It appeared unmoved. "Little weird kid, looks like he's always sucking a lemon?"
    Marcello asked, "So Pang Booboohead is your lead stalking suspect?" He was starting to take an interest in the updates. Or didn't like being left out. "Is his writing troubling or something?"
    Julianne said to me, "If someone read your scripts, they'd think you were paranoid."
    "Good thing no one reads them, then." Marcello, ever supportive.
    Julianne came over, stirring coffee into hot water. Not freeze-dried instant, but ground. She said, "I know," took a sip, then retreated and dumped it into the sink.
    "A student of mine told me he's a little loose around the hinges," I said.
    "And they're such good judges of character at this age," Marcello said.
    "Bugayong's a wuss," Julianne said. "I'll bet you a new coffeemaker that he pees sitting down."
    I tested one of the scabs on my knuckles. "I know. It's not him. He's got the imagination for it. I doubt he has the nerve."
    "And your neighbor has the balls but not the imagination," Marcello said. "So who's got both?"
    Simultaneously, Julianne and I said, "Keith Conner."
    Her zeroing in on the same name unsettled me. Not that any of the prospects were good ones, but given Keith's resources, his targeting me was a pretty chilling scenario to contemplate.
    Julianne sank into a chair, picked at her flaking black nail polish. "You never really think about it," she said. "How thin the line is that separates everyday resentments from obsession."
    "The stalker's obsession or mine?" I headed for the door. I wasn't sure what I hoped to accomplish, but if my scuttled career had taught me anything, it was that a protagonist has to be active. I wasn't gonna sit around and wait for the next escalation--the intruder, inside my house, with a camcorder and a claw hammer.
    From behind, I heard, "ON FEBRUARY NINTH, PATRICK DAVIS HAS. NOWHERE. LEFT. TO HIDE."
    I said, "Today's the tenth, Marcello."
    "Oh." He frowned. "ON