The Witness

The eraser leaves chalk dust across my fingers.

I always stay late on Thursdays. Parent-teacher conferences next week, twenty-three students who deserve thoughtful progress reports, and an empty apartment that doesn't mind waiting. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, maintenance promised to fix that six months ago. My coffee went cold somewhere around the third grading rubric.

Outside the window, the parking lot sits half-empty. Sister Margaret's Camry, the janitor's truck, my little Honda that needs an oil change. The October evening has that particular blue quality, not quite dark yet, shadows stretching long.

I'm writing Excellent growth in reading comprehension! on Tyler's report when I hear the car.

Not unusual. St. Catherine's shares the lot with the church, and evening mass starts at seven. I keep writing.

But no car door opens.

I glance up.

A black SUV idles near the far end of the lot, headlights off. Another car, a sedan, pulls in beside it. Two men exit the sedan. One opens the SUV's back door and hauls someone out.

My pen stops.

The someone is a man. Older. Gray suit rumpled, tie askew. He staggers between the other two, and for a moment I think they're helping a drunk friend.

Then I see his hands.

Tied behind his back.

I should look away. I should duck below the window, pretend I never saw, grade Tyler's paper and go home and forget. That's what a smart person would do.

I don't move.

One of the men says something. I can't hear it through the glass, but the bound man shakes his head violently. No, no, no.

The taller man pulls out a gun.

My lungs locked.

The shot doesn't make the sound I expect. Muffled. Like a book dropped on carpet. The man crumples, gray suit and all, and lies still on the asphalt.

Move, I tell myself. Move, Bianca, get away from the window, call 911, do something,

The tall man looks up.

Directly at my window.

At me.

He looks directly at me across the parking lot. Forty feet, maybe fifty, but I can see him clearly in the last light, dark hair, dark suit, a face that gave nothing away.

He sees me too.

Time stops. The fluorescent light buzzes. Tyler's report waits half-finished on my desk. The dead man bleeds onto the parking lot of St. Catherine's Catholic School, and the man who ordered it stares at me through a second-story window.

I should run.

I can't move.

He says something to the other man. Points at the building. At my classroom. The other man nods and starts walking toward the entrance.

That breaks the paralysis.

I grab my keys, my phone, abandon everything else. The door, the hallway, the stairs. I take them two at a time, sensible flats slapping against linoleum. The back exit. If I can reach the back exit before they reach the front,

Sister Margaret is in the hallway.

"Bianca? What's wrong? You look..."

"Call 911." The words come out strangled. "There's been... someone's been... in the parking lot..."

Her face pales. "What?"

But I'm already moving, past her, toward the back stairs. I hear the front door open downstairs. Heavy footsteps.

The back exit. Twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.

I slam through it into the evening air.

And stop.

He's there.

The tall one. The shooter. Leaning against the wall beside the door like he knew exactly where I'd go. Like he planned this, choreographed my escape route and beat me to the finish line.

"Miss Vale." His voice is calm. Pleasant, almost. "We need to talk about what you saw."

My legs won't work.

"I didn't..." The denial collapses before it forms. We both know I did.

He pushes off the wall. Steps closer. The last light catches his face, and I notice irrelevant details the way drowning people notice the color of the water: the sharp line of his nose, the expensive cut of his suit, the faint dark stain on his cuff that I'm trying very hard not to identify.

"You're the third-grade teacher," he says. "Bianca Vale. Twenty-eight years old. Lives alone on Maple Street, apartment 4B. Drives a 2019 Honda Civic with a dented rear bumper. Visits her grandmother in the nursing home every Sunday."

The list hits like physical blows.

"How do you..."

"I know everything about everyone who works here, Miss Vale. St. Catherine's is... under my family's protection." A pause. "Usually, that protection extends to the staff."

Usually.

"Please." The word scrapes out of me. "I won't tell anyone. I didn't see anything. I don't know anything. I'll quit, I'll move, I'll..."

"You'll do exactly what I tell you to do."

It's not a threat. It's a statement of fact.

Behind me, the door opens. The other man appears, shorter, broader, watching me like I'm a math problem he's been asked to solve.

"Car's ready," he says.

The tall one nods. "Miss Vale. You have a choice."

I almost laugh. Nothing about this feels like a choice.

"You can come with us now, quietly, and have a conversation about your future. Or..." He tilts his head. "Actually, let's not discuss the alternative. I have dinner reservations."

He's going to kill me.

The thought is surprisingly calm. Clinical. Like I'm grading it. Cause of death: wrong place, wrong time. Grade: F for survival instincts.

"Who are you?" I whisper.

The almost-smile flickers across his face again.

"Enzo Ricci."

The name means nothing to me. Should it? He says it like it should.

"I've never..."

"You will."

He gestures toward the parking lot. Toward the black SUV where a dead man lies on the asphalt.

"After you, Miss Vale. We have much to discuss."

I could scream. Sister Margaret is inside; she must have called 911 by now. But his men are between me and the door, and his hand rests at his side with the casual confidence of someone who's never had to bluff.

I think of my third-graders. Tyler, who finally learned to read this year. Emma, who brings me flowers from her mother's garden. Marcus, who needs extra help with math but tries so hard.

I think of my grandmother, waiting for Sunday.

I think of my mother, dead at thirty-two, and how I promised myself I'd live carefully, safely, inside all the lines.

I walk toward the SUV.

Enzo Ricci falls into step beside me. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, something sharp and clean, something that has no business existing this close to a murder scene.

"Smart choice," he says.

I don't answer. My voice isn't working anymore.

The body is gone.

Where the man fell, only a dark stain remains, already being scrubbed by another man in coveralls. Efficient. Professional. Like they've done this a thousand times.

They probably have.

Enzo opens the SUV door.

"After you."

I climb in.

The leather is soft. The interior smells like new car and cigars. There's a bottle of water in the cup holder, condensation beading on the glass.

Enzo slides in beside me. The door closes.

And my old life ends.