“This is Dave Rothmayer. I—I didn’t really know who to call. My dad’s gone this weekend, visiting my aunt who’s sick, you know? And I don’t want to worry my mom, not with the kids at home. But then I found the note from Tim Morone, and I figured I’d better call you—I’m real nervous. Yes, the basement of the Bailey Building! You know, I was just moving some stuff, and there’s this room—! You’re going to come? Well—I didn’t want to put you out— No, I haven’t mentioned it to anyone yet. I thought I should call the police— OK, I’ll wait till you get here.”

            Dave hung up the phone and gave it back to Jarod, who grinned at him.

            “Well done!”

            “Thanks, Professor! Now I guess I just stand here and wait.”

            “Right. I’ll be right here to back you up. Amy?”

            I nodded and stepped back behind the boxes, looked through the viewfinder of the video camera with its night-vision mode on. It was an incredibly expensive camera, I was sure, like the ones used by the press, and I wondered where he’d gotten it on such short notice. He knew everything about how to use it and had shown me what to do. I was well hidden by my boxes outside the little closet room, as was Jarod by his, but Dave was there in front of them by himself, suddenly apprehensive but excited, too. It’s not every day a teenager gets to let a murderer stalk him and then help catch him.

            The wait seemed interminable, but finally we heard a door open and close and heavy footsteps come through distant rooms. Decidedly creepy. I switched on the video camera.

            Sam Leland came into the room, a small flashlight aimed at the floor. “David?” he called softly.

            “Oh, Mr. Leland! I’m so glad to see you! I’m sure you can explain what it all means.” Dave shone his flashlight in Leland’s face.

            “Don’t do that! Lower your light, young man.”

            “Sorry. I’m just—well, it’s weird. What does it all mean?”

            “We’ll get it straightened out, son. I know you’re worried about your friend Amy’s father.” He smiled kindly. He looked like such a nice man. “Tell me what you meant by a note from Tim Morone. He’s dead, you know.”

            “Of course I know! But, see, I was moving some of these boxes ‘cause I suddenly remembered that I found this little room back here when I was a kid and I thought maybe the police would want to know about it, and there was this note stuck under one of the boxes, from Tim to Amy, but it had your name in it, and it made me nervous, you know? I mean, what he said about you. It’s not true, is it? I didn’t really believe it, because you know how Tim was, but still—I think the police ought to see it, don’t you? And this room?”

            “Maybe you should let me see the note, David.”

            Dave backed up a step. “Well, I don’t know.”

            “Let me have it, David!”

            “But—it’s not true, is it? I mean—he wasn’t blackmailing you, too, was he? Wouldn’t that make you a suspect, too? What’s—what’s that? No—no—I read somebody gave Tim this drug with a syringe like that—keep it away from me! Did you kill him, Mr. Leland? And frame Professor Doran?”

            He was backing up toward the little room, and Mr. Leland was coming after him, still smiling, the syringe gleaming in the light of Dave’s flashlight.

            “Yes, I did, David, and now, regrettably, you are a little too smart and know a little too much.”

            “But—but—you can’t kill me! I mean—you’ll never be able to hide it—or pretend like Professor Doran did it—‘cause he’s in jail! So you—you can’t!”

            “Well, David, it’ll go like this. Poor Amy Doran was so desperate to protect her father that when she found her friend Dave snooping around, she panicked. Like father, like daughter.”

            “No! You can’t do that to Amy!” There had been real fear in Dave’s voice, but now anger came into it, and Jarod decided it was time to make his own move.

            “He’s right. You can’t.”

            Leland jerked around to where the deep voice was coming from, and Jarod stepped out from behind his boxes and hit him. Just once, a smooth blow in just the right place to make him crumple. He and Dave caught him and dragged him into the little room while I turned off the video camera and brought it in. In the light of my flashlight held in my teeth, I connected it to its stand where Jarod had set it up. Dave was taking a little too much enjoyment helping Jarod duct tape the drooping Mr. Leland to the chair. He glared at him indignantly when they were done.

            “He was going to frame Amy for murdering me?”

            “He certainly was,” Jarod answered him. “You did a brilliant job, Dave. You think well on your feet. You’ve gotten us enough evidence to convict him. Now it’s time to teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget. Back behind the camera with Amy.”

            Dave squeezed in with him. I gave him a grin. He really was a sweet boy. Just like Young John.

            “Ready?” Jarod asked.

            “Ready.”

            “Camera.”

            I turned it on. Jarod, standing out of the light of our flashlights, dashed a glassful of water on Mr. Leland’s face. He came to with a gasp and a sudden panicked struggle.

            “Good evening, Mr. Casby. Welcome to the Marshalsea Prison. My name is Dickens. I’ll be your narrator for the evening.”

            “What? What is this? Who is that? You have the wrong person! My name is Leland!”

            “Casby, actually, a reference which you would understand if you had ever had the foresight to read Dickens. Let me tell you about Mr. Casby, and we’ll see if you recognize him. Mr. Casby is the financial lord and master of a number of tenants. They love him, think he’s a wonderful fatherly figure. He comes to visit and bestows smiles and kind words on one and all. A veritable biblical Patriarch. Then he goes to his place of business and engages in the day’s work of squeezing those people for every cent he can get out of them. In his heart of hearts he’s a hard, grasping, greedy miser who cares nothing for people as long as he can get what he wants out of them while still looking as good as possible. A big, fat hypocrite. Sound familiar?”

            “You’re insane!” Leland cried.

            “No more insane than a man who tortures a college student with drugs just for the fun of it!”

            “You’re insane!” the bursar shouted at him again.

            “Come, come now, Mr. Casby. I already have your confession, made to another boy you were about to kill, as well as your intention to frame an innocent man’s innocent daughter for it.”

            “What do you want? Tell me—I’ll give you what you want!”

            “The way you gave Tim Morone what he wanted? Well, I don’t want anything, Mr. Casby—except justice. And this is justice.” The syringe glinted in his hand. “Your own chosen weapon. A combination of Cyclamenaline and Paranethol. Now I’ve chosen it—for you.”

            “No!” Sam Leland cried.

            “Is that the way Tim Morone begged? And it felt good, didn’t it, to hear him beg? So much power. And now I’ve got the power, Mr. Casby.”

            As he brought the needle closer to Leland’s skin, the bursar begged, “Don’t! Don’t!”

            “It’s not quite so fun anticipating the pain as it is watching it, isn’t it? And it was fun, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?” he roared, making Dave and me both jump. My hands were icy.

            “Yes! Yes, it was! I enjoyed making that little toad squeal and cry! But what does it have to do with you? I’ve never done anything to you!”

            “My indignation is aggravated by the dastardly cruelties practiced on helpless youth in this foul den,” Jarod snapped. “Have a care; for if you do raise the devil within me, the consequences shall fall heavily upon your own head!” I recognized the slightly-altered quote as one of Nicholas Nickleby’s, before he thrashed Mr. Squeers, the cruel schoolmaster. “The moral, Mr. Casby, is that there are people in this world who won’t sit by and let innocent people suffer!” He leaned close and said quietly, almost a snarl, “And I’m one of them. Professor Doran and his daughter won’t suffer any more for the murder of Tim Morone. You planted all that evidence, but there was no syringe found. Why is that, Mr. Casby? My guess is that you’re the kind of man who would keep it, to gloat over, as memorabilia of your moment of power. You did, didn’t you?”

            The sharp tip was dangerously close. He gasped, “Yes, I did!”

            “Where do you keep it?”

            “In—in my desk in my office.”

            “You know, I’ve said all along that you’re a man who prepares. You think of everything. But that was a stupid thing to do. Your power went to your head. It was like a drug, and drugs dull the brain. Like this one.” And he plunged the needle into Leland’s arm.

            Leland’s scream rang in the tiny room. I clutched Dave’s arm, petrified. I had been so convinced he wasn’t going to do it. I really thought he wasn’t the sort of man to do to a guilty person all the terrible things that person had done to an innocent victim. There is a reason why we punish things like torture: they’re simply wrong, whether done to a jerk like Tim Morone or a murderer like Sam Leland. I had thought his sense of justice was more…just than that.

            Jarod came back, turned off the video camera, and took it off its stand. He said to the whimpering Leland, “I’ll come back and take care of you tomorrow,” then said to us, “We’re done. Come on.”

            Dumbly we followed him. He pushed a few of the boxes back into place. Then he noticed our ashen faces in the light of his flashlight.

            “What’s wrong? I know my methods are a little unorthodox, but—”

            “A little unorthodox!” I cried. “Jarod, you—”

            Realizing dawned in his eyes. “Oh, no! No—Little Dorrit, I didn’t do what you think! That wasn’t Cyclamenaline and Paranethol I gave him but a much milder drug. Any moment now he’s going to realize that the slight burning under his skin was only enough to scare him, and he’s going to be feeling like a complete fool. I could never do that to another person, not even one as guilty as Leland.”

            I put my hand to my head. “Thank God,” I muttered.

            Jarod popped the tape out of the camera and gave it to Dave, along with a fat manila envelope. “Would you like to take the evidence to the police?”

            “Would I!” he cried.

            Jarod gave him keys. “You can take my car.” Dave’s face beamed. “Just don’t get any tickets, OK? Bring it back to the Skarsgards’ house when you’re done.”

            “Thanks, Professor!” He flew away.

            Jarod put his arm around my shoulders, and we walked out of the building. “Did you really think I would do that, Little Dorrit?”

            “I was convinced that you wouldn’t, that you didn’t have it in you to hurt someone like that, but then you did, seemingly, and I was terribly confused.”

            “I’m sorry. Other than misunderstanding, I hope it wasn’t too disturbing.”

            “Well, I know now that there’s still more to you than I thought.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Anger,” I said softly. “You have so much anger against people who hurt others, because of the way they hurt you and forced you to hurt others.”

            His arm was heavy around my shoulders, as if he leaned on me for support. “I have gone places I don’t want to go, and I know I will go more places yet I don’t want to go. All I can do is keep focusing on helping people.”

            “The best outlet for anger,” I agreed. “Jarod, you have such a strange way of doing it. Your mind doesn’t work like anyone else’s.”

            “I tried to do it the normal way once, through proper channels. I was on a bomb squad then. It didn’t work. No one would listen. So I do it my own way. Emotional justice. Make a person believe he’s experiencing what his victim experienced. Make him feel the same emotions. Sometimes, when the law doesn’t work, that’s enough.”

            “Well, congratulations, Nicholas, on thrashing my Sir Mulberry Hawk.”

            “For your honor, Kate, and that of your father.”

            I suddenly snorted, laughing. “Mr. Casby! You really are Mr. Pancks, Jarod!”

            His laugh rang out in the quiet street.