The Finishing School Read Online Free PDF Page A

thing.” Reyes drew a ragged breath and looked up at the ceiling with reddened eyes.
    “Tell me where you found the bodies.”
    “Whitney on her bed. The other girl on the floor near the bathroom. Carmen nowhere.”
    “What were they wearing when you found them?”
    “Whitney got on a top and underpants. The other, nothing.”
    “Did you touch or move anything in the room?”
    Reyes looked alarmed. “No. I know better. You get in trouble for that, right? I see a lotta cop shows on TV.”
    “Why didn’t you call the police right away, when you discovered the bodies?”
    “I call Mr. Seward first, because it’s his daughter, his house.”
    “And he told you not to call the police?”
    Reyes looked alarmed. “Tell me? No. He never say nothing like that.”
    “James Seward didn’t tell you not to call the police?” Melanie asked, confused. Hadn’t Seward already admitted that to her?
    “No, I tell him, please,
señor
, you call. I don’t speak too good, you know. He never tell me not to call.”
    “Okay.” Melanie paused, intending just to note this minor discrepancy and move on. Yet something about the timing here bothered her. “Mr. Reyes,” she couldn’t help asking, “your daughter was missing, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’d found her two classmates dead?”
    “Sí.”
    “Well, I guess I’m just surprised you wouldn’t call immediately yourself.”
    Reyes flushed red, his eyes leaking tears again. “Yes. Of course I
wanna
call right away, because Carmen is gone. I
want
to.”
    “So why didn’t you?”
    “You know, I very confused. Mr. Seward say he gonna call for me.”
    “But I thought you just said it was
your
request that Mr. Seward call.”
    Reyes started to sob noisily. “Yeah. I dunno. Is very confusing,” he choked out.
    Jeez, this guy was a mess. Maybe there was nothing here. Anyway, she’d better get the basic facts down.
    “Okay, I don’t want to get hung up on this detail. Mr. Reyes, please.” Melanie gave him a tissue from her bag. “Are you okay to talk?” she asked after he’d blown his nose and wiped his eyes.
    “Yeah, okay.”
    “Now, do you remember what time it was when you first called Mr. Seward?”
    Again Reyes looked alarmed. “Time? No, I can’t say.”
    “Any idea? You said it was probably around…” She paused, getting confused herself now. “Ray-Ray, what time do we have that Mr. Reyes entered the Sewards’ apartment?”
    Ray-Ray flipped back to the preceding page in his spiral notebook. “‘Witness states daughter went upstairs around seven forty-five. Witness further states he became concerned when daughter had not returned after two to three hours.’”
    “So at the latest it was ten forty-five when you entered the apartment,” Melanie said to Reyes.
    Pain and panic raced across Reyes’s face. “I don’ know times, okay? I’m not looking at my watch. All I know is, I wanna find my Carmen. You gonna help me do that or not?”
    “Yes, of course. We just need to hear what happened. We have to get the facts.”
    “Look, I don’t know the time, okay?” Reyes snapped. “I call for a while and don’t get no answer. Finally I reach him, he say he gonna call the cops himself. So I wait for him to come home. Mr. Seward tell me do sonthing, I listen, because I need my job.”
    Melanie nodded. Whatever Seward’s motives, Reyes’s motives for obeying seemed authentic. “So what happened next?”
    Reyes sighed deeply, his face scrunching up. For a moment Melanie thought he might cry again. But then he began speaking very quickly, the words spilling out in a rush. “Around midnight Mr. Seward and the missus come home. He check the bodies, very fast. He call the police. The rest you know. So let’s talk about sonthing else.”
    She looked at him searchingly, wondering why he was so determined to change the subject, but then decided to let it go. This man was obviously upset. She had enough to do to solve this case without imagining