Free 16 Hitman by Parnell Hall Page A

for?
    Three forty-five and students began streaming out of the school building. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian. Laughing and smoking, and
shouting obscenities and bopping to iPods and giving the general
impression that any learning that had just transpired was entirely
coincidental and not to be inferred.

    Scattered among the youth of our nation were a few growntips, who tended to fall into two categories: the younger, earnest,
and idealistic; the older, jaded, and cynical.
    Martin Kessler was not among them. By four o'clock it was clear
he had not emerged. I wondered if he had been to school at all.
    A couple of black students were having an argument outside
the gate. Girlfriend and boyfriend, most likely, from the names they
were calling each other, such as bitch and nwtlierf+ckcr. The girl had
her top knotted under her breasts. The boy had the waist of his
pants hanging under his ass.
    I went over, said, "Excuse nie."
    The boy said, "Whoa!" and took a big step back. He was lucky
he didn't trip on his jeans.
    I forgot what I looked like. The kid was probably holding drugs
and thought I was a plainclothes cop. I said, "You know Mr.
Kessler, the English teacher?"
    His eyes were wide. Was this a trick? That was his first assumption.
It took a second to realize that would be a mighty strange trick.
    "Yeah," he said. "So what?"
    "You know him?"
    That put him on the defensive again. "I'm in his class. So?"
    "Was he in school today? I didn't see him leave."
    "'Scuse me?"
    "I didn't see him come out just now. Was he here?"
    The girl was either smarter or couldn't resist dumping on hint.
"Duane, you stupid or what? Man wanna know if the teacher here.
He here, but he left."
    "When?"
    "Enda class. Bell's three forty-five."

    "You're saying he taught his afternoon class?"
    The girl looked at me the way she'd looked at Duane. "Shee-it."
    The two of them were laughing so hard I might as well not
have been around. "Where is he?" I interrupted.
    "He gone."
    "Is there another door?"
    She shrugged. "Onliest one I know."
    "Any chance he stayed around after school, talked to someone?"
    "Man, he gone."
    I thought that over, and I didn't like it. If Kessler got out of
school without me seeing him, that meant he didn't want me to see
him. Which was understandable under the circumstances. He
knew I could stake out his classroom. So avoiding me had to be a
short-term goal. Taking pains not to see me now.
    While I was thinking that, the teacher most likely to induce
passion in students, though not necessarily for her subject, came
out. She was dressed conservatively enough, in a loose cotton shirt
and mid-calf-length skirt. Her hair was back in a ponytail. She
wore large-framed glasses.
    Does that describe a raving beauty? No. Quite the opposite. It
describes a quite ordinary woman.
    Wrong again.
    This was a woman to die for. Or to kill for. Even the most
unobservant couldn't help but notice that those casual clothes concealed young, perky breasts, with nipples like ...
    But I digress.
    Anyway, the girl I'd been talking to saw her and called, "Hey,
ma'am. He lookin' for Mr. Kessler."
    She flashed a smile. "Just missed him," she said, and kept on
going.
    It occurred to me, the whole thing could not have been better
staged to create the illusion Martin Kessler had been there. What a
ridiculous thought. And shame on me for having thought it. These people were not conspirators, sent to play a part. I'd approached
thenm. The woman wasn't in on it. She'd only said something
because the girl said something. A conspiracy theory made
absolutely no sense. The only reason I'd come to it was I'd been
watching the door, and I was sure Martin Kessler hadn't come out.

    Unless ...
    And this is where we start getting into paranoia run wild. I recognized it as such. I knew that's what it was. But somehow that
didn't help.
    It was a sound paranoid thought.
    I knew Martin Kessler killed Victor Marsden. I was the only one
who knew